Cleveland Clinic researcher receives $1.5 million for cardiovascular research

A Cleveland Clinic researcher is one of two in the country to receive a $1.5 million grant to study the extracellular matrix, or the "natural glue" that holds together tissues and organs.

The Clinic's Suneel Apte and Jeffrey Holmes, of the University of Virginia, both received the American Heart Association-Allen Distinguished Investigator Award.

Recent evidence shows that this natural glue could play a more central role in everything from aging to cell-to-cell communication, and these aspects are "understudied relative to other aspects of cardiovascular biology," according to an Aug. 9 news release.

Their work could help uncover the next breakthrough in heart-health research, the AHA and The Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group announced.

Apte, a biomedical engineering researcher at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner Research Institute, said he uses architecture to help describe his work.

"If our body is a building, the cells are the bricks and the extracellular matrix, which binds cells together, is the mortar," he said in a statement. "Unlike mortar in a wall, extracellular matrix is not still but constantly moving and changing. It is continuously being broken down and rebuilt by cells of the heart and blood vessels, but this process is poorly understood."

His research team will study that breakdown and why and how it occurs, as well as how that may contribute to heart development and vascular disease, according to the release.

"Instead of timidly looking brick by brick at the mortar, we propose using new technology to take in all the changes in the tissues at one fell swoop," Apte said. "Ultimately, we hope our approach will find novel disease markers and targets to develop drugs that will treat cardiovascular disease."

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